It might just be the most perfect morning in the history of the world.  Okay, not the most, but it is right up there.  I have basketball (NCAA tournament baby) on the television, plus my team won yesterday, I have a plate of left over tacos in front of me that I am eating for breakfast, and I have a full day free to art.  Frankly, add in a glass of wine (it is too early for that) and my day would be set.

It has been a crazy wonderful week.  My husband’s baby sister and brother-in-law have been in town this week (thus the left over tacos) so we have been showing them the sights of San Diego.  We haven’t seen them in forever, and the couple has quickly become abundantly loved by my children.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s day so all kinds of leprechaun antics happened around the house including but not limited to a significant supply of my green art crap being pulled from their hiddy holes and squeezed all over my monthly calendar.  I think that may have what cemented it for my kids that the leprechaun is real, cause mom would never allow that to happen to her art desk.

But with it being St. Patty’s day, that meant corn beef and cabbage…which I love, and I am the only one in my family who loves it, so my family puts up with it one day a year, and only one day.  However, I think I finally have my son coming over to the dark side with me…YES!!!!  Two against five means maybe we can have it two days a year.

The shows I am working on with the choir at my kids school are finally starting to come together so they are venturing into the fun zone instead of stressful ‘are we going to pull it off’ zone.  (Yes we were extremely over ambitious when we designed these two shows, but I refuse to do simple just because they are little kids with little to no experience.  I think we so under estimate what out kids can do.)

So like I said, a crazy, but full and wonderful week.  I have managed to slip in a little time for card challenges, so I hope you enjoy what I’ve come up with.

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Up first today, we have a what I want to say is a color challenge, but it really isn’t.  No instead the slueths over at Can You Case It have simply challenged us to use three colors.  That’s it.  Pick three colors and go.  There is so much freedom in a challenge like this that it is almost overwhelming.  But I saw a really cool technique over on the Ranger Art Supply blog that I wanted to try out, so I figured this was the challenge

for it.

I pulled out a random circle stencil (I think it is a Dylusion stencil) and filled it with molding paste over black card stock.  Then while the stencil was still in place, I sprayed three different colors of color spray.  I used Dylusions Brick Red and Funky Fuchsia and Adirondack Sunset Orange (so there are my colors, pink, red and orange).  I then dried everything and pulled the stencil off.  It looks even cooler in person.  I then stamped out a Dina Wakley stamp, embossed it and sprayed a little more pink over it.  I embossed a sentiment and adhered both the stamp and sentiment to the card with some dimensional tape.  I know this isn’t typical for a card, and yet, it is so me…I love this.

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Next up we have an actual color challenge from the holiday fanatics over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown.  This week they were looking for a card that showed green and white.  (Nice throw down to St. Patty’s week.)

I decided against stamping an image here, and instead pulled out my christmas tree die from Poppy Stamps and die cut two trees in green glitter paper, and two trees in green shiny foil paper.  I also hand cut out some ‘snow’ from white glitter paper.  I layered the card, leaving a bit of room on the top and bottom so I could stamp my repeating ‘merry’ stamp out.  I keep things very clean and went with just this simple design.  I thought about stamping out a sentiment, but I really liked how the simple scene looked and didn’t want to muck it up.

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The designers over at Sunday Stamps tossed out a really fun sketch this week that really had so many different possibilities for it.  I choose to punch out my circles instead of adding them to the card.

I pulled out my Brusho and added blue, purple and red to a

piece of Ranger watercolor card stock.  I sprayed water to it, and pulled out four different sized circle punches and punched out the circles.  I then realized the Brusho sort of looked like a crazy version of outer space or the night sky, so I snagged a black piece of card stock and added a sentiment and stars from Hero Arts into where the cuts out would fall.  I then embossed a bad stamp of a moon(don’t ask how I stamped out that badly, but I sure did) and ended up liking it, so we will pretend I stamped the moon on purpose like that.  This might not be the most creative use of this sketch, but it is different, and I do always like being different.

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The designers over at Cupcake Inspirations this week cooked up a fun inspiration challenge for all of us to work on.  This week the inspiration was only…rainbows.  There is so much that can be done with rainbows, and I decided to do a technique I’ve done before with an Easter card, but this time I went with

fruit.

I stamped out a bunch of fruit from Paper Smooches in clear embossing powder onto white card stock.  Here is where I messed up.  I should have done this onto watercolor paper, but I just wasn’t thinking.  And I had to do a lot of masking to get the six pieces of fruit stamped out in a row, and needless to say, I just didn’t want to do it again.  Then I snagged my watercolors and dripped watercolor from the top of the page into each piece of fruit, filling them in with rainbow colors.  I smeared a little of the color under each image and stamped out a sentiment in black ink and left it at that.  I like how the image wouldn’t been seen without the color in it.

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Finally today we have one last color challenge from the designers over at Always Playing with Paper‘s The Challenge.  This week they were looking for the use of the colors navy, lime, blue and gray.  I took my personal cue from the window treatment in the pic loving how the different colored squares looked.

I pulled out a wonky square embossing folder from Darice and embossed a piece of watercolor card stock with it.  Then I sprayed the whole piece and started adding drops of spray ink with my large watercolor paint brush.  I went with my watercolor sprays because I didn’t have a lime watercolor anywhere else.  I used Dylusions Slate Grey, London Blue, After Midnight and Fresh Lime.  I sprayed everything once again with water letting it run and blend just a little before I ran my paper towel over it.  Then I cut the whole thing in half on the diagonal and adhered it over a piece of dark gray paper.  Unfortunately with all the different color and water the squares from the embossing just weren’t showing up so I snagged my white gel pen and drew in all the squares.  Finally I grabbed my fainted chicken from Art Impressions and stamped him, leaving him black and white cause frankly there was already enough color.

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That’s it for today.  Hope you enjoyed how I pushed the challenges today.  I think today I really did push it.  Now I am off to watch basketball baby…  Have a great March Madness weekend.